One of the last Special Forces veterans of World War II has left us

 

Jack Mann was probably the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group in World War II.  If you haven't heard of the LRDG, they were one of the first so-called "Special Forces" units in any Allied nation during that war, and helped to establish successor units such as the Special Air Service and numerous others.

The LRDG never numbered more than 350 men, all of whom were volunteers.

The LRDG was formed specifically to carry out deep penetration, covert reconnaissance patrols and intelligence missions from behind Italian lines, although they sometimes engaged in combat operations. Because the LRDG were experts in desert navigation, they were sometimes assigned to guide other units, including the Special Air Service and secret agents across the desert. During the Desert Campaign between December 1940 and April 1943, the vehicles of the LRDG operated constantly behind the Axis lines, missing a total of only 15 days during the entire period. Possibly their most notable offensive action was during Operation Caravan, an attack on the town of Barce and its associated airfield, on the night of 13 September 1942. However, their most vital role was the 'Road Watch', during which they clandestinely monitored traffic on the main road from Tripoli to Benghazi, transmitting the intelligence to British Army Headquarters.

With the surrender of the Axis forces in Tunisia in May 1943, the LRDG changed roles and moved operations to the eastern Mediterranean, carrying out missions in the Greek islands, Italy and the Balkans. After the end of the war in Europe, the leaders of the LRDG made a request to the War Office for the unit to be transferred to the Far East to conduct operations against the Japanese Empire. The request was declined and the LRDG was disbanded in August 1945.

There's more at the link.

Jack Mann had a fascinating and varied career.  Here are some excerpts from his obituary.

Jack Mann, who has died aged 100, served with the SAS and the Special Boat Service (SBS) and was believed to be the last surviving member of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG).

Mann volunteered to join the LRDG as a radio operator in January 1943 ... Mann was responsible for receiving and deciphering the double-coded messages that directed operations over great distances.

Using modified No 11 sets, housed in cabinets on Chevrolet and Ford trucks, he had to contend with high desert temperatures and sandstorms which degraded equipment and disrupted incoming signals. As the enemy's range-finding equipment became more sophisticated, transmissions became increasingly hazardous.

The LRDG made the desert their accomplice. Their patrols believed that they could always outwit the Axis forces on the ground. Mann, however, hated the desert. "Don't talk to me about sand," he used to say. "I've had it in my eyes, my mouth, up my nose, in my food, everywhere."

. . .

Mann subsequently moved to Nahariya, the base camp of the Special Raiding Forces, and transferred to the newly formed Special Boat Service as a radio operator – one of its original members ... Mann was seconded to the Greek Sacred Squadron, which had trained with the SAS and seen action in North Africa. The Squadron used small boats and took part in hit-and-run amphibious operations against German garrisons in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Aegean Sea and the Dodecanese islands ... Mann was involved in reconnaissance missions using kayaks and a camouflaged hide-out near Bodrum on the Turkish coast. On other raids, Royal Navy motor torpedo boats and launches took members of the squadron to Turkey, where they were transferred to fishing caiques. Their rations were sometimes supplemented by wild boar, and fish dynamited in the sea.

. . .

One night, Mann was asleep in his hide-out on the island of Chios when he and a comrade were awakened by a German "E" Boat, a fast motor torpedo boat, approaching the shore. The two men, armed with rifles but in their underwear, greeted the German crew in Greek. The crew surrendered but they tried to be friendly, claiming that they were all Anglo-Saxons. Mann retorted that he was a Jew, ordered them to cut off their swastika badges and had them placed in the local prison. There they were made to clean a local building of faeces left by the occupying German forces.

. . .

As a Jew, he had been determined to fight the Nazis, and then to help the Jewish diaspora and displaced Jews of Europe when the war ended. In November 1947, the UN passed a resolution to divide British-ruled Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

Israel declared independence in May 1948. Arab armies invaded in what became known as the Arab-Israeli War and Mann joined the conflict to help establish a state of Israel. He was given the rank of major and put in charge of the Southern Front.

During a crisis in which he had to get to HQ urgently, he commandeered Moshe Dayan's jeep. Ignoring the fact that the commander of the important Jerusalem Front was sitting in it, he ordered the driver to take him straight to HQ.

. . .

He remained closely involved with the veteran associations of the Special Forces in which he had served, and at his funeral his coffin was escorted by standard-bearers from the SAS Regimental Association, the SBS Association and the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women.

Again, more at the link.

I heard many stories of the LRDG, the original SAS in the Western Desert, and the SBS in the Dodecanese campaign and subsequent events, from my father, who served with the Royal Air Force during those same campaigns.  He met several members of all those groups on various occasions while arranging support missions, both resupply and attack operations.  He said that they almost all smelled vile (due to lack of water in the desert for personal hygiene), were extremely rude about official bureaucratic requirements, and "fought like the Devil himself at the drop of a hat, and would drop it themselves if nobody else would"!  Their consumption of beer was likewise legendary, because they could seldom get any in the field, so made up for it when in a town or city by drinking more than one bar dry every night.

Such men were the "Founding Fathers", as it were, of almost all US and European Special Forces units during and after World War II.  I daresay our own members of the SEALs, Delta Force, the Ranger units, the Green Berets, and other related outfits would be happy to raise a glass to the memory of Jack Mann and his comrades in arms.  One hopes they were reunited on the other side of the river - preferably near a well-supplied pub!

Peter

Autonomous drones: looks like I was right

 

A week ago I put up an article titled "Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future".  In it, I looked at autonomous AI-guided drones that found targets with a minimum of human input, then made the kill/no-kill decision on their own without a "man-in-the-loop" to make the final call.

It's happening already.

Three Ukrainian civilians were slaughtered by Russian drones that were guided by artificial intelligence, marking an ominous escalation in warfare’s robotic age.

Tetiana Bubynets, 19, a university student, and two others were blown to bits last month at a gas station in the city of Zaporizhzhia by a drone outfitted with an experimental artificial intelligence system that decides, without a human operator, where to strike, the New York Times reported.

The drone, which looked like a model airplane, was programmed to fly towards the gas station, but once it closed in, an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects, experts and military officials told the paper.

“This is a risk for the whole world,” said Col. Serhiy Minaiev, the commander of Ukrainian air defenses in Zaporizhzhia.

“In a few years, we will be living in a ‘Terminator’ movie. It’s no joke. Machines are making decisions to strike.”

Debris recovered from the gas station and other strike sites around the city revealed that the drones were running on Nvidia minicomputers that determined where the drone would detonate, officials and experts said.

There's more at the link, including photographs of Russia's autonomous AI-guided drone.

What's particularly ominous about that report is that the drone deliberately targeted three civilians, who would not have been wearing uniform and would not have been in a military location.  Instead, they were at a "gas station", where "an AI system autonomously chose its target — most likely propane tanks —  based on its training to recognize such objects".  Those three civilian deaths can't be classed as "collateral damage", as so many official statements so often label such incidents.  They were deliberate damage, selected by the AI in accordance with its programming, because they happened to be convenient targets to spread terror and fear among the local populace.  Furthermore, the NVIDIA chips powering those Russian drones are officially not allowed to be exported to that country . . . but they got there anyway.  If governments can smuggle them through embargoes, so can non-governmental threat groups and criminals.  It's not all that difficult to do.

What's worse is that AI-driven drone technology, and the tactics to use it, are now spreading from Ukraine and Russia to the rest of the world.  For example, Finland is buying and using Ukrainian drone technology, and hiring battlefield-experienced Ukrainian experts to show them how to use it.

Finland is directly integrating Ukrainian battlefield data into its defense industrial base, with President Alexander Stubb emphasizing that Kyiv possesses unprecedented expertise in modern high-intensity warfare.

Speaking on the strategic value of frontline data, Stubb noted that Ukraine holds more real-world combat insights than the rest of Europe combined. Helsinki is now actively applying these hard-learned lessons across its defense sector, drawing critical data on the tactical deployment of drones, missile systems, unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and combat casualty care under modern fire conditions.

By systematically absorbing Ukraine’s operational data into Nordic defense manufacturing, Helsinki is rapidly adapting NATO’s northern flank to modern, sensor-saturated combat without having to learn those lessons through direct conflict.

Again, more at the link in the X thread - read the many comments from others.  Nor is Finland alone in such measures.  As mentioned last week, a US company is now supplying Ukraine with AI guidance systems for its drone hardware, making them much more deadly on the battlefield.  I've seen reports from at least a dozen countries talking about how they need to learn from Ukraine, and/or buy drone hardware and software from Ukraine, in order to ensure their own national security.  (One of them is Taiwan, which is arming itself to repel a threatened Chinese invasion.  Imagine what a cross-beach amphibious landing would suffer, in terms of both lives and matériel, if it were attacked by a hundred thousand or more autonomous drones before even one enemy soldier had set foot on shore!  Needless to say, China isn't terribly enthusiastic about this.)

It's time we all faced up to the reality of this threat - not just from nations, but from terrorists, and cross-border criminal enterprises such as drug cartels, and even from internal dissident groups such as ANTIFA, BLM and others.  Many of them are extremists, and won't hesitate to garner publicity for their cause by murdering their opponents, or anyone whom they perceive as an enemy.  Think how this might impact routine law enforcement activities.

• A drug cartel in Mexico might find it useful to send a few autonomous drones across the border to attack local, state and federal patrols, so they could sneak their illegal wares into the USA under cover of all the fuss as law enforcement tries to help its comrades.  They're already murdering their own police in Mexico, so why should they hesitate to do the same to ours?
• Rival gangs such as the Crips, the Bloods, the Mexican Mafia, etc. would probably not hesitate to use such weapons against each other (and possibly even against local law enforcement agencies) in their ongoing, never-ending fight to control urban territory for their criminal activities.
• Extremist political groups could use them to attack rival groups and/or individuals.  For example, Charlie Kirk was killed by a sniper while addressing a public gathering.  What if a future speaker could be killed by a high-explosive autonomous drone?  The "shooter" could launch it from several miles away, and be in little or no danger of detection or arrest.

Those are just a few possible examples, and they're all entirely feasible.  I think that in as little as three to five years from now, we're going to see attacks on civilian targets by autonomous drones in many countries, from who knows how many sources.  There's no guarantee that we, personally, might not become a victim of them.

Peter

Drone warfare developments - it's a scary future

 

Many of my readers doubtless took note of a report earlier this month about a US-Ukrainian military exercise earlier this year.

Ukrainian drone teams demolished a brigade of US Army tanks and armored vehicles during a live war game held this year—but the US soldiers were lucky enough to get “respawn” attempts while learning from the experience.

The semiannual military exercise, called Combined Resolve, gave the US military a firsthand taste of how modern drone warfare has evolved on the battlefields of Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone operators participating in the exercise were easily able to spot and destroy US armored vehicles by mimicking the actions of dropping bombs from above or moving close enough to simulate a kamikaze strike, according to US officials and a participant who spoke with The Wall Street Journal.

. . .

... by repeating the training scenario throughout the two-week exercise, US Army troops got better at figuring out how to disperse and hide from the drones while using countermeasures such as electronic warfare.

The US military is not alone in learning such lessons from battle-hardened Ukrainian drone operators.

Ukrainian drone teams also participated in a Swedish-led military exercise for NATO, called Aurora 26, that was also held in May. A mock mechanized assault by NATO tanks and infantry fighting vehicles allowed Ukrainian drones to take out dozens of the attacking armored vehicles, which eventually forced planners to reset the war game, The Kyiv Independent reported.

There's more at the link.

While trying to find out more, I came across this 45-minute video article from Deutsche Welle.  Itfeatures both a drone operator's perspective (a British soldier fighting for Ukraine) and drone casualties speaking of it from their point of view.  It also goes into how the technology is developing, and how China already has a commanding lead in the field.  As wars become more widespread, what will this mean for soldiers?  I recommend the report very highly if you aren't up to date with recent developments.

The technological advances referred to in the video report are already making headlines.  Earlier this month, we learned that US AI technology is now "enhancing" conventional Ukrainian drones.

In mid-July, the Ukrainian military began receiving Shrike drones made by the Ukrainian company SkyFall equipped with AI-powered autonomy hardware and software developed by the US company Auterion. The companies plan to deliver 50,000 drones equipped with Auterion’s Skynode S strike kits in the coming months.

That allows human operators to manually fly the Shrike first-person view (FPV) drones into a battlefield area, designate a target up to half a mile away, and then “flip the switch to turn it into fire-and-forget terminal guidance mode,” Lorenz Meier, co-founder and CEO of Auterion, told Ars.

The operator can abort a strike or choose a different target as long as they have a radio signal connection with the drone, Meier explained. But the drone can still automatically track and fly into targets without any human guidance, even if it loses its connection with the operator due to buildings or terrain blocking the signal or because of enemy jamming on the same radio frequencies.

To home in on targets, Auterion’s software relies solely on the visual information available from the Shrike drone’s main onboard camera. That means the Shrike drones can track and strike moving targets without any reliance on GPS—a crucial advantage on modern battlefields, where GPS jamming has also become common.

Again, more at the link.

When I think back on my own days in uniform, I can only be devoutly grateful that we didn't have to face such devices on African battlefields almost half a century ago.  I think my odds of surviving such combat would have been a whole lot lower if they'd been around!

The scary thing, to my mind, is that all this technology has already devolved to individual user level, in manufacturing as much as in operation.  A private person can buy just about all the drone propulsion and guidance technology used in military battlefield drones, and assemble his own versions.  A warhead isn't difficult to devise, given a little chemical knowledge and/or access to stolen military or commercial explosives.  What might happen if a well-organized terrorist outfit such as Al Qaeda or ISIS, or their various and sundry offshoots, were able to get hold of drone "swarming" technology and launch fifty or a hundred explosive drones against a major target?  I'm thinking sports stadiums, or government buildings, or even key targets such as the President when he's traveling by vehicle.  What if some of the drones could try to obstruct the takeoff or landing of the Presidential aircraft?  What if they did the same to a normal commercial flight, potentially causing hundreds of casualties and disrupting the entire air transport network for who knows how long?

I fear we haven't even begun to witness how dangerous such technology might be in the wrong hands.

Peter

Is the UAE taking combat warship lessons from Israel?

 

Some years ago, I said about the Israeli Navy:

I like the Israeli approach, which crams lots of hitting power into even small hulls (see, for example, its Sa'ar 5 class corvettes, which as far as I know are the most heavily armed ships of their size [just over 1,000 tons] anywhere in the world, and on an armament-per-ton or tons-per-weapon basis might be the most heavily armed warships since the age of the dreadnought).

That approach has since been epitomized even more in Israel's Sa'ar 6 corvettes, almost twice the displacement of the earlier Sa'ar 5's, but even more heavily armed.  There are probably more weapons and weapon systems aboard a Sa'ar 6 than aboard any two, or even three, typical NATO frigates.

I thought about this when reading an article about the new Falaj 3 class "patrol boats" of the United Arab Emirates.  Their displacement is only about 670 tons, but they've packed an awful lot of firepower into that small hull.

Photos of the United Arab Emirates’ Falaj 3 class patrol boat are a reminder that a vessel doesn’t need to be a corvette or even a frigate to be armed like one. At a little over 200 feet long, the Falaj 3 is officially designated an offshore patrol vessel (OPV), but it boasts a weapons suite that would be impressive on a missile corvette and, in some respects, even a light frigate. In fact, at around 670 tons full load displacement, and a crew of just 39, it may be one of the most heavily armed warships anywhere in the world for its size.

OPVs are generally built for constabulary duties rather than high-end naval combat. Their primary missions include enforcing exclusive economic zones, countering piracy and smuggling, fisheries protection, search and rescue, and humanitarian assistance. As a result, they typically prioritize endurance, seakeeping, and low operating costs over heavy armament. Many Western designs in this category carry little more than a medium-caliber gun and a handful of remotely operated weapon systems, with no dedicated anti-ship missiles or significant air-defense systems.

The Falaj 3 takes a very different approach, as is immediately apparent from these photos.

Forward sits a Leonardo 76mm OTO Super Rapid gun equipped with the STRALES guided ammunition system, giving the ship a weapon capable of engaging everything from surface targets to fast-moving aerial threats ... Directly behind the gun is an eight-cell vertical launch system loaded with MBDA VL MICA surface-to-air missiles. This ‘fire and forget’ missile can intercept targets at a range of up to around 12 miles and at altitudes of up to 30,000 feet.  Further aft is a 21-cell Raytheon Mk 49 launcher for the RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missile (RAM), giving the vessel a second, independent layer of point air defense. Most OPVs are fortunate to carry an adapted man-portable air defense system, if they have any dedicated air-defense system at all.

The offensive fit is equally notable. Four MM40 Exocet Block 3C anti-ship missiles provide over-the-horizon strike capability, while two 12-cell Low-cost Guided Imaging Rocket (LOGIR) guided rocket launchers offer an inexpensive way to engage drones, uncrewed surface vessels, and fast attack craft without expending much more costly missiles ... Completing the package are two Electro Optic Systems (EOS) R400-M 30mm remote weapon stations and two 32-barrel Rheinmetall Multi Ammunition Soft-kill System (MASS) decoy launchers, providing close-range firepower and survivability against incoming guided weapons, respectively.

There's more at the link.

I entirely agree with a powerful weapons load-out like that.  It remains a perennial worry to some naval observers (including me) that so many corvettes, frigates and destroyers in US and European service are relatively lightly armed for their size.  There isn't enough depth to their defenses, particularly if they face a swarm of incoming drones or missiles.  If they miss even one, they may suffer severe, disabling damage.  They can't even reload missiles at sea, meaning that in a serious engagement, they'd shoot themselves dry in a relatively short space of time.  After that . . . they're expensive targets.  (Compare them to their equivalents in the former Soviet Union and/or the Russian Navy today.  The Russians have not forgotten the lessons of history, and arm their ships accordingly.  See, for example, that nation's Steregushchiy and Gremyashchiy classes.)

I hope the example of the Falaj 3 class of patrol vessels is studied, and spreads.  We live in an increasingly dangerous world, particularly the ocean passages through narrow straits like Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, etc.  To defend them, we need larger numbers of considerably more powerful vessels than have so far been employed.  Air power has its place, of course, but in the end ships at sea are like infantry on the ground.  You need them to take and hold strategic areas.

Peter

The Saudi nuclear program: what else did anyone expect?

 

I'm cynically amused by the brouhaha over the US deal with Saudi Arabia to help that country develop a peaceful - underline, peaceful - nuclear energy program, including (it seems) enriching nuclear fuel.

Consider the facts of the current situation, in no particular order.

• Saudi Arabia bankrolled much of Pakistan's nuclear program, including its nuclear warheads and missiles.  It's long been rumored among "those in the know" that Pakistan has guaranteed Saudi Arabia that it can have nuclear warheads at twenty-four hours' notice, in an emergency.
• Saudi Arabia has bought Chinese ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads.  By strange coincidence, they're the same type of ballistic missiles that Pakistan has in its nuclear silos.  Odd, that . . .
• Iran has launched missile attacks on Saudi Arabian territory from the north, using cruise and ballistic missiles.  Its Houthi allies have done the same from Yemen in the south.  That would be enough to make any nation a little paranoid.  What if the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard, or whatever it calls itself these days, were to figure out how to put nuclear payloads on those missiles - either a full-blown nuke warhead, or a "dirty nuke" using conventional explosives to spread radioactive material around, say, Riyadh or a major military base?
• Israel has for decades maintained that it will neither confirm nor deny that it has nuclear weapons.  Anyone with two working brain cells to rub together is quite confident that they have more than a few, almost certainly including major thermonuclear weapons.  See my comments in these pages from time to time concerning the so-called "Vela incident".
• Given those various and sundry realities and threats, it was obvious that Saudi Arabia was going to go ahead and greatly expand its nuclear program(s).  It didn't really have any choice but to do so, if it was to survive in an environment like that.

That being the case, why is anybody surprised that President Trump would try to get involved with Saudi Arabia's plans and help them along?  Saudi was going to do it anyway.  We could have sat there and criticized, or expressed concern, or whatever - which would have bounced off Saudi's national interests like water off a duck's back.  This was a case of making the best of two very difficult and unpalatable choices, and I think the President acted wisely.  I'm sure he, and the US establishment, would rather not have made that choice, but as I said earlier, this was going to happen whether or not we were involved.

As for the fat-headed reports that the President was/is at odds with his Energy Secretary over what was done, and how it was done . . . yeah, right.  As if any Secretary in the President's cabinet is going to land a surprise like that on his boss's desk, without so much as a "by your leave"!  Sure, there may have been friction in the give-and-take between the White House and the Energy Department, but what else is new?  The very fact that the Energy Secretary still has his job is sufficient evidence that any such friction was relatively minor.

I'm also enjoying outraged suggestions from the left that the President is trying to stretch the agreement in new ways by pressuring Saudi Arabia to accept the Abraham Accords in exchange for US nuclear help.  There's nothing new in this:  President Trump has been trying to persuade Saudi Arabia to sign on to the Accords ever since he took office.  It might be a very useful talking point to mention that if Israel finds Saudi Arabia diplomatically cooperative, some of the former's nuclear warheads may no longer needed to be targeted at the Arabian peninsula.  In Saudi's position, I'd find that a very thought-provoking consideration . . .

Overall, I think America joining Saudi's nuclear program as a partner nation has far more positives than negatives.  It will also make Iran rethink its nuclear ambitions, given that the existing Saudi-Pakistan nuclear relationship might put them between two actinic fires, so to speak.

What's next in the Middle East?  Your guess is as good as mine . . . but it's likely to be "interesting", in the sense of the fabled ancient Chinese curse!

Peter

Stories that developed during my absence

 

I've been following a number of stories in recent days, and some others popped up during my absence at LibertyCon.  I thought I'd put them all into a single post here, so you can decide which ones you'd like to investigate further.  Click the title to be taken to the post/article concerned.

1.  The Commies Mount An Across the Board Push: DSA targets local elections around the nation in a well-planned strategy.

Instapundit author Glenn Reynolds points out that "The DSA and its allies have targeted local elections because they can mobilize a small but decisive number of voters in low-turnout elections".  This thinly-disguised extreme Socialist/Communist movement is trying to take over the Democratic Party from the inside, working its way upward through the ranks.  It's a timely warning, IMHO.

2.  Income needed to afford a median-priced home has nearly doubled since 2020, report finds.

It's no wonder younger people today complain that they simply can't afford a home of their own.  The cost of the latter has almost doubled in six years, but salaries certainly haven't followed suit.  I'd hoped for a "price dividend" as illegal aliens were deported (or deported themselves), but their absence from the housing market hasn't yet made much of a difference.  Can things find a new balance?

3.  Everest hospital scrambles for antivenom as snakes migrate to high ground.

"Experts said venomous snakes, including king cobras, were heading up the mountains as the climate warmed, threatening tourists and climbers."  That's a new and unexpected danger in the Himalayas, which have been relatively snake-free until now due to their extremely cold ambient temperature.

4.  Try Not to Crack a Rib Laughing.

"Police say 41-year-old Leonard “Lil Riblet” Barksdale allegedly hopped a privacy fence in Southeast Memphis around 2:13 AM after spotting what he reportedly described as '“a lightly supervised gas grill'. According to neighbors, Lil Riblet moved through the backyard 'with the confidence of a man who’s never once considered consequences.' That confidence lasted approximately four seconds. Because waiting in the yard was Memphiszilla… a pit bull described by witnesses as 'Built like a refrigerator with childhood trauma'."

5.  AI helped diagnose 18 children whose rare diseases had stumped doctors.

"OpenAI’s o3 Deep Research model helped clarify 18 diagnoses for children who had struggled to find causes for their illnesses and symptoms. 'It’s a total game changer,' said one of the study’s lead researchers, Catherine Brownstein, the scientific director of the genetic investigations arm of the Manton Center for Orphan Disease Research at Boston Children’s Hospital."

6.  Pokémon Go Scans Quietly Trained the Navigation Tech Now Headed Into Military Drones.

"Hundreds of millions of Pokémon Go players spent years filming the streets, parks, and buildings around them to earn in-game rewards. Those roughly 30 billion environmental scans are now owned by Niantic Spatial, and they helped train a camera-based navigation model that a U.S. defense contractor is preparing to put into drones and other military robots. Most of the players had no idea."

I hope you found them as interesting as I did.

Peter

Is the tank dead on today's battlefield? Two perspectives

 

During my military service, I was never involved with tanks (or any other armored vehicle), apart from hitching a ride on one now and again.  I also had a couple of Soviet-built tanks shooting at my position once upon a time, which was most unpleasant.  Fortunately they went away without doing too much damage.

Be that as it may, the advent of drone warfare has made many question whether the tank has a future or not.  That question has been asked before, of course, particularly when the first anti-tank missiles made their appearance in the 1950's.  Those early missiles might have been buggy, clumsy and not very accurate, but if they hit what they were aimed at, the results tended to be unpleasant for those inside.  (I can remember the first-generation French ENTAC missile, which was used by South Africa along with later-generation MILAN missiles.  The former was a bit of a dog.  The latter was very successful, and very useful.)

Two articles over the past week, both by British authors and focused around British and NATO equipment, have examined the issue anew.  First:  "On Nato’s border with Russia, I witnessed the death of tank warfare".

Last week Latvia's military chief warned that Moscow has gained an edge over Nato in drone warfare and could exploit Europe's slow rearmament drive and invade the Baltics by 2028.

Nato commanders now face a looming crisis: learning how to fight on a 21st-century battlefield dominated by AI-assisted drones that can rapidly spot and target tanks and military vehicles from the skies.

. . .

Traditionally, the frontlines were ruled by tanks. Acting as armoured juggernauts, they were able to punch through enemy defences with firepower.

And while military planners still believe tanks have a place in war, some have questioned whether they are able to hold ground as they did in the past.

. . .

Across Ukraine, drones account for more than 90 per cent of battlefield casualties, the vast majority being tanks and armoured vehicles.

The enormous task of overcoming this modern threat faces commanders from across Nato, as allied nations scramble to re-equip their militaries and stockpile weapons systems capable of defending against the inevitable drone onslaught that will dominate the wars of the future.

. . .

To combat the threat posed by Russia, Nato has set up the eastern flank deterrence line (EFDI), to defend its border from Finland to Romania.

It is like a modern-day Maginot Line, an ill-fated series of fortifications built by France in the 1930s but which failed to stop Nazi Germany from invading in the Second World War.

However, Nato chiefs are confident the EFDI will be able to hold, using AI-enabled targeting and autonomous systems to destroy assaulting troops and vehicles in a kill zone stretching hundreds of miles.

"We have changed our exercises to directly rehearse how we will fight," said Gen Christopher Donahue, the commander of US Army Europe & Africa.

. . .

Currently, the Army has around 6,000 drones in its arsenal. However, it is understood these could be depleted within a week in a war with Russia. Soldiers say the pace of drone delivery needs to increase, describing the kit as "absolute game-changers".

"We need to get them rolled out like now. I can't emphasise it enough," said Cpl John Mackenzie, 27, who was training in Finland.

There's more at the link.

Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former tank officer, has a different view.  His article is titled "The tank isn’t dead. It’s just changing."

In the drone-infested battlefields of Ukraine, and across Nato exercises increasingly dominated by unmanned systems, it is easy to conclude that the tank's days are numbered. The burnt-out wrecks of Russian armour scattered across the Donbass seem to provide compelling evidence.

Yet history urges caution. Since the first great tank battle at Cambrai in 1917, commentators, academics and journalists have repeatedly declared the death of the tank. Every time, they have been proven wrong.

. . .

Reducing our ability to conduct armoured manoeuvre warfare would undermine one of the fundamental pillars of land combat, a principle that has endured since the First World War and arguably much longer. An even greater error would be to procure digitally enabled platforms such as Challenger 3 and Ajax without fully funding the active protection systems and hard-kill defensive suites required for them to survive on a battlefield saturated with drones and autonomous weapons.

. . .

The [Strategic Defence Review] correctly recognises that warfare is changing. It estimates that 80 per cent of future battlefield lethality will come from drones and autonomous systems, with only 20 per cent delivered by traditional platforms such as Challenger 3, Ajax and attack helicopters.

The implication is clear: there will be far more unmanned systems and far fewer manned vehicles. The British Army's future force of 148 Challenger 3 tanks is in stark contrast to the nearly 700 main battle tanks in service when I joined the Army 37 years ago. Back then, drones did not exist.

The future battlefield will include robotic combat vehicles. Challenger 3 must therefore operate as the command node of a wider digital combat system, controlling a family of drones and autonomous platforms that enhance both its lethality and survivability.

. . .

Tanks have always been vulnerable when operating without infantry support. The lesson has not changed. Tanks must be protected by infantry. Today, they must also be protected by drones and defended against them.

Again, more at the link.

I suspect the real problem is going to be economics.  If a $24 million [Wikipedia's figure] Abrams M1A2 SEPv3 tank can be taken out by a few drones costing less than $5,000 each (possibly much less than that), what's the point of spending that $24 million on one tank instead of four or five thousand drones?  There is a point, of course, from a military perspective, but what's a politician going to think (and say)?  How can he justify the larger expense to his constituents when they're clamoring to save money on defense and spend it on entitlement programs?  That's the cold, hard reality of politics in almost every NATO country right now, and the USA is no exception.

The same arithmetic affects almost every branch of military expenditure right now.  For example, a friend served in an artillery battery with the US Marine Corps.  His M777 howitzer costs $3.7 million apiece (according to one source).  Medium- to long-range drones, accurate enough to hit their targets first time, every time, and even to fly into buildings to run down their exact target, cost about $10,000 apiece from Western manufacturers right now.  Thus, the cost of one M777 cannon, without ammunition, would instead buy up to 400 drones of equivalent terminal performance to an artillery shell, with their warheads built in.  Is it any wonder that the USMC (and many other armed forces around the world) are either considering, or already actively engaged in, reducing their artillery forces while increasing their drone forces?

I'm sure many of my readers have sufficient expertise and experience to weigh in.  What say you, friends?

Peter

A military procurement nightmare: Britain's Typhoon fighter and its successor

 

In a long and very detailed article, Lewis Page argues that "Britain’s next-generation fighter jet is a disaster in the making".  He goes into detail on the background to the present project, and the aircraft that have preceded it in Royal Air Force service.  It's far too long an article to reproduce here, so I've selected as an example just one cost comparison between the current front-line aircraft of the US and UK air forces.

The Eurofighter Typhoon, as flown by the RAF, is the most expensive tactical aircraft ever built by the human race. When the last Tranche 1 planes are gone next year (disposed of with half their lifetime hours unused) the RAF will possess 107 aircraft.

Recent statements reveal that the size of an RAF front-line squadron has fallen from 12 to “up to 10” jets. Officials have recently congratulated themselves that they typically have “65 to 70” Typhoons “available” nowadays for the seven RAF front-line Typhoon squadrons that exist on paper.

Some more Typhoons are in the training and test units but it’s clear that others, probably more than 20, are in a long-term un-flyable condition: in deep maintenance, with parts robbed from them to get others flying, or both.

Each of the 107 Typhoons, according to the National Audit Office, cost well over £215m to obtain in 2011 money, or around $355m (£264m) if we use contemporary exchange rates.

By comparison, the undisputed, most powerful fighter jet in the world is the US Air Force’s F-22 Raptor. Only 183 Raptors were made in the end, as opposed to the 600-plus Eurofighters so far.

But despite this much shorter production run and the fact that it is an entire generation more advanced than a Typhoon, the acquisition cost of one Raptor to the US taxpayer was somewhat lower than the cost of one Typhoon to the UK taxpayer. The Raptor throws into stark relief the almost unbelievably bad value for money offered by the Typhoon.

In short, the Typhoon was a procurement disaster.

There's much more at the link.  Highly recommended reading for aviation and military enthusiasts.

The article helps us understand why military hardware has become so expensive.  The deadweight of bureaucratic and political control interfered so much with the Typhoon's development, and the lack of vision among military leaders in making it a single-purpose rather than a multi-role aircraft, effectively doomed it to operational irrelevance for much of its service life.  Furthermore, the astronomical costs of not just each aircraft, but spare parts to keep it flying, wasted so much of the Royal Air Force budget that funds were not available for different types of aircraft, or urgently needed upgrades.  (For example, for the past two decades almost every major frontline strike fighter has had AESA radar, offering vastly improved performance over older types:  but the RAF's Typhoons are only now beginning to get one - and, at that, only enough to fit to less than half the fleet.  Without it, if they had had to fight against other modern fighters, they would have been at a huge disadvantage.)

I suppose we could draw parallels between Britain's fighters and the US Navy's ships.  The USN has had so many problems developing new designs that it's had to scrap almost all of them as being too complex and/or too expensive, after its "experts" had spent years gold-plating them and adding every feature they could think of.  It's now been forced to bodge together a "frigate" that is basically a slightly more heavily armed Coast Guard cutter, because the much more sophisticated Constellation class frigates have had to be abandoned due to their design becoming bogged down in excessive complexity.  Will something similar happen to Britain's proposed new fighter aircraft?  I think there's a very good chance that it will.

China is producing new aircraft and ship designs in multiples every year, and building them by the dozens.  One hopes that both Britain and the USA will wake up to reality and start moving faster . . . but if the politicians insist on sticking their oar in, that's not very likely.  Can Secretary of War Hegseth cut through the entrenched bureaucracy and layers of control that have bedeviled US military design?  That remains to be seen.

Peter

Technology restrictions: a strategic move that's falling short

 

Joseph Assad explains the conundrum.

There is a moment from my time living in Abu Dhabi that I have never forgotten. During a tense negotiation over a defense technology sale, talks had stalled — not over price, not over capability, but over American export control regulations that prevented us from delivering the full system the UAE needed. During a coffee break, a UAE Brigadier General pulled me aside and spoke to me in Arabic. Holding up a phone charging cable, he said quietly: "The U.S. wants to sell us this wire for $100. China will sell it to us for $20. We said we will pay the $100, but now your delegation says we must wait two years. We can have the Chinese wire tomorrow." 

He paused, then added with a resignation that still stings: "And when we say we will buy from China, the U.S. accuses us of betraying our friendship. What are we to do?"

That question deserves an honest answer from Washington. So far, it hasn't gotten one.

American export controls on semiconductors and related technologies were designed with a single adversary in mind: China. The logic was sound — deny Beijing access to advanced chips powering artificial intelligence, and you slow its military modernization and geopolitical ambitions ... [but] Overzealous and inflexible application of these controls has swept up trusted allies and strategic partners — particularly in the Gulf — leaving them locked out of American technology they are willing and able to buy.

. . .

China is responding to U.S. and allied export controls with a whole-of-nation effort to make itself independent of Western semiconductor technology. In 2019, the first Trump administration cut off Huawei's access to U.S. technology, a move that appeared to consign the company to irreversible decline. Instead, Huawei launched an effort to wean itself from reliance on U.S. technology — and by 2024, it had launched new products featuring advanced semiconductors and was developing 5G mobile network infrastructure.

There's more at the link.

It's a very real problem.  Mr. Assad suggests that the USA is moving in the right direction, trying to free up access to its latest technology in return for verified commitment from customer nations.  However, there will always be the problem of supplies filtering through from third parties.

I saw this at first hand in South Africa during the years of the mandatory UN arms embargo.  South Africa couldn't obtain major items, such as warships or fighters, from major powers, but still bought or made almost everything it needed.  Sophisticated nations such as Israel and Taiwan, and political allies such as Chile or Paraguay, could act as third party channels through whom much could be obtained.  Other nations such as West Germany and Portugal simply ordered more of some materials than they needed for their own armed forces and manufacturers, and sold the surplus to South African agents.  Romania, at the time behind Warsaw Pact lines, nevertheless defied its Communist principles (?) to sell carbon-fiber helicopter fuselage components through third parties to South Africa, which was able to obtain elsewhere (or make itself) the engines and avionics needed to build them into fully operational aircraft.  Thus, even though the whole world was technically obliged to restrict South Africa's access to high technology, it really wasn't that hard to bypass most of those restrictions.

(It helped that at the time, South Africa was the single largest producer of gold in the world.  Gold coins and bars make an untraceable and very acceptable medium of exchange when wanting to disguise the origin and/or destination of a shipment of high-tech gear.  Paperwork?  What paperwork?)

America's trade and technology war with China is simply running headlong into the same conundrum.  Despite restrictions, China was able to buy enough advanced US chips to study their design, and are now building their own equivalents - and apparently refusing to buy more from the USA, despite the lifting of the US technology embargo.  As for preventing other nations from buying Chinese technology, it all boils down to economics.  Charge too much, delay delivery enough, impose enough restrictions, and the customer will look somewhere else.  If someone's prepared to pay enough, or wants independence of supply strongly enough, there are always ways to get around restrictions.  Low-balling an opponent's price is another very popular way of gaining access to a market:  and, once gained, it can be maintained in all sorts of ways.

Peter

The lower the cost, the easier the proliferation

 

I was struck today by the title of an article:

10,000 Low-Cost Cruise Missiles In Three Years

Procurement Plan Laid Out By Pentagon

You can read the details for yourself at the link.  Of particular food for thought to me was this:  if "low-cost cruise missiles" are now a mainstream item, how long can it be before they become cheap enough - and easy enough - to be manufactured almost anywhere?  And, if and when that happens, how long will it take renegade religious or tribal groups (e.g. the Houthis in Yemen), or terrorist organizations (e.g. Hezbollah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc.) to start manufacturing their own equivalents?

It's not as hard as it sounds.  Remember Bruce Simpson?  More than two decades ago, he designed and built a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM) in his home garage, using off-the-shelf components bought from Internet retailers.  He wrote an article about how easy it was to do it, including the following excerpt:

... during the past decade, huge strides have been made in commercializing much of the technology on which the cruise missile is based and it is my firm belief that building a low-cost, autonomous, self-guided, air-breathing missile with a significant payload capability is now well within the reach of almost any person or small group of persons with the necessary knowledge and skills.

Targeting/Guidance

As mentioned above, one of the key components of a cruise missile's guidance system is a mil-spec satellite-based GPS system.

Today, compact, high quality, high accuracy GPS receivers are readily available for just a few hundred dollars. The inclusion of an easily used computer interface in many of these units makes them well suited for use in a low-cost cruise missile (LCCM).

While the GPS provides information necessary for tracking waypoints and identifying the final destination, smaller course corrections (for stability) can be provided by the solid-state gyro systems now readily available for use in model helicopters and aircraft.

Instantaneous measurement of altitude and groundspeed can be provided by a semi-forward looking radar and doppler radar units (possibly built around components such as these and these. This allows the LCCM to fly lower than would be possible if relying solely on GPS and offers a degree of contour-hugging even when the exact nature of the terrain is not available.

The gyroscopic and radar-based systems could also provide an inertial backup guidance facility in the event that the GPS system was lost, blocked or simply turned off when an attack by such LCCMs was imminent or underway.

Onboard Computing

As Moore's law continues to produce a rapid rise in the speed and fall in the cost of computer chips, we've already reached the point where obtaining sufficient number crunching capability is no longer difficult or expensive.

Single-board computer systems are another readily available off the shelf component that can be recruited for use in an LCCM. Even the sophisticated realitime operating systems necessary for supporting the type of software needed to interface the guidance/targeting systems to the control servos are just a download away.

. . .

The total component costs for an LCCM (less payload) could be as little as $6,000 for the smallest, simplest version, with a larger, more sophisticated design still requiring little more than $10,000 worth of parts and materials.

There's more at the link.

That technical data, and those prices, date back to May 2002 - twenty-four years ago this month.  In those intervening years, components have become much, much smaller and lighter, much more capable, and much cheaper.  They're still freely available as elements of radio-controlled models (aircraft, boats, vehicles, whatever).  Plastic sheeting, 3D printed components, and ultra-light structural elements are easy to buy and often just as easy to make yourself.  Heck, people have built and flown in ultralight aircraft made out of packaging cardboard!  I'd say it's likely the cost to home-build a LCCM today might well be less than $2,000, and at most $3,000.  Cargo delivery drones can be even cheaper:  for example, a drone capable of delivering 20-odd pounds at a range of 6+ miles costs only a little over $500 in quantity.  Longer range?  Heavier cargo capacity?  No problem.  A warhead would be extra, of course, but with the advent of powerful "home-brewed" explosives, a warhead strong enough to demolish the average house - but still small and light enough to be carried by a LCCM or light delivery drone - could probably be assembled in a domestic bathroom or kitchen.

So, if our armed forces are talking about buying thousands of low-cost cruise missiles, what are the odds that terrorist and/or extremist groups aren't planning on doing exactly the same thing?  How would we defend against such simple, terrifying weapons if a wave of them were launched into the average American city?  It could be done by driving a rented truck or trucks to a suitable launch site, a few miles from the target zone (e.g. a park or golf course, particularly at night, or putting them onto a boat a couple of miles offshore);  erecting a wire or wood frame to hold the missiles at an appropriate angle for launch, and aimed in the right direction;  and setting them off at the chosen time.  Unless the perpetrators were seen during the preparation phase, it's doubtful they'd be detected in time to stop them;  and once the missiles had been fired, they'd simply abandon the trucks and drive away in other inconspicuous vehicles.  For that matter, they may not care about getting away.  They may have a martyrdom mentality that would welcome a final shootout with the cops (on television, of course, for the whole world to see).

That scenario is entirely feasible and practical.  I think we've got a whole new threat to our security to consider.  What we can do about it (if anything) remains to be seen.

Peter

The early days of drone warfare

 

CDR Salamander noted yesterday that the Iranian Shahed-136 drone was based, at least in part, on a joint US-West German development from the 1980's.  He quotes Wikipedia's description.

In the early 1980s, the United States and West Germany began developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) designed to detect and engage enemy radar systems. The aircraft was also intended to mimic larger aircraft, acting as a decoy to divert enemy fire from manned aircraft. On the German side, Dornier, and later its successor company DASA, was working on the project for the German Air Force.

During the project’s development, a workable seeker head could not be developed, limiting its suitability for the intended anti-radar mission. This, along with the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the project’s eventual termination. Following the end of the project, details of the system’s design were sold to Israel, which would develop its own IAI Harpy.

There's more at the link.

That's true, of course, but there was an additional drone being developed at the same time that was also sold to Israel.  It was a South African project known as the Kentron ARD-10 Lark.  The following image and report date from the early 1990's.

At the time, South Africa was becoming increasingly sophisticated in its use of the relatively primitive unmanned aerial vehicles of the time.  I had some peripheral involvement in the electronics being developed for them.  An account of the period includes the following:

Various use must have been made during the following years after 1983, however the next open mention was during the 1987-88 raids into Angola (Operations Modular/Hooper/Packer) in which extensive use was made of UAV's for surveillance, reconnaissance, artillery spotting and more interestingly to lure Soviet SAM batteries out of hiding so that our long range G-5/6 guns could hit them. Two Kentron Seeker systems were lost to the last mentioned tactic, although it was apparently more than worth it - many expensive SAM-8/9/13 were fired attempting to shoot the Seeker's down, in doing so not only did they waste valuable ammunition - but also revealed their positions and many of their Soviet SAM sites were then promptly destroyed by G-5/6 artillery fire (apparently one Seeker survived between 16-17 SAM-8 missiles being fired at it before it was finally shot down).

The latter engagements were during 1987/88.  As a direct result of those engagements, the ARD-10 was developed as a more advanced surveillance and reconnaissance platform, with particular emphasis on forcing enemy radars and air defense ordnance to reveal their position.  However, during the same period South Africa embarked on the process that was to lead to democratic elections in 1994, and the ARD-10 was one of many military projects (including the Carver strike fighter) that were canceled due to the peace conference and the end of the Border War.  Its design was sold to Israel for a relative pittance, probably at about the same time that the US-West German project found the same destination.  There seems little doubt that both of those designs were used as input to Israel's Harpy drone, shown below.

It achieved wide international sales and was prominent in a number of smaller wars.  It was later developed into the much more sophisticated Harop drone, shown below, which in modern versions is pretty much state-of-the-art in its field.  It became prominent due to its success in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020. 

Information available about the Kentron ARD-10, Dornier DAR, and Israeli Harpy drones was undoubtedly studied in Iran, and that country's subsequent Shahed 136 bears an unmistakeable resemblance to them all.  All of those aircraft are relatively backward and primitive compared to modern designs;  but then, for a simple strike drone that can be bought cheaply in large numbers and launched in "swarms" to overwhelm enemy defenses, one doesn't need great sophistication.

Russia manufactures the Shahed 136 under license as the Geran-2, and has apparently developed a jet-propelled version of the drone that flies much faster and higher.  This will be harder to intercept, and if its cost can be kept low enough to afford mass production, may make air defense's job much more difficult.  As long as the cost to intercept the drone can be kept higher than the cost to build and operate the drone, the attacker will have an economic advantage.  We'll have to see whether that remains the case as drone technology advances.  If "stealthy" attack drones can be made cheaply enough (something I'm sure many nations are working on), they may pose a grave threat to almost all air defense systems.

Peter

Facing reality over Iran

 

I'm getting more and more fed up with politicians, commentators, journalists and so-called "experts" all saying that President Trump's decision to strike Iran was misguided, wrong-headed and stupid.  The same goes for all the European and other nations refusing to provide support, military or otherwise, for the joint US-Israeli campaign in that country.

The blunt fact of the matter is that for almost half a century, the West has wrung its hands, expressed dismay and shock, and uttered pious platitudes every time Iran did something evil.  Whether it was murdering tens of thousands of their own citizens, or exporting terrorism to many parts of the world, or bombing Israel, nothing Iran did elicited a suitably strong response from the West.  All they did was talk.  They did not act.  With every incident, they kicked the can further down the road, for future politicians and leaders to do something about it - but they never did.

President Trump and his leadership team recognized that the can could not be kicked any further.  The time had come to act, to stop Iran potentially wreaking havoc all over the world.  The key moment of decision probably came during negotiations in Switzerland in late February.

Iranian officials told their US counterparts during crunch talks last month that the Islamic Republic possessed enough enriched fuel to build 11 nuclear bombs, President Trump’s special envoy claimed Monday night.

“Both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly with, you know, no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60% [enriched uranium],” Steve Witkoff told Fox News host Sean Hannity, “and they’re aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs, and that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.”

Witkoff and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner engaged in three rounds of indirect talks beginning in Oman Feb. 6 and concluding in Geneva, Switzerland Feb. 26 in what turned out to be a last-ditch effort to prevent US military action against Iran.

“Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel that they possessed. That’s how they opened up,” Witkoff recounted.

“We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you dead in your tracks,” he continued.

“They then went on to say that beyond the inalienable right to enrich, that that was going to be their starting point. And Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed and said, ‘Well, we’re really in for it now.'”

Witkoff, 68, made worldwide headlines ahead of the Geneva talks when he claimed Iran was “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bomb-making material.”

The special envoy expanded on those remarks Monday: “I know this: They have 10,000, roughly, kilograms of fissionable material. That’s broken up into roughly 460 kilograms of 60% enriched uranium, another 1,000 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium …They manufacture their own centrifuges to enrich this material. So, there’s almost no stopping them. They have an endless supply of it.

“The 60% material ... can be brought to 90%, that’s weapons-grade, in roughly one week, maybe 10 days at the outside. The 20% can be brought to weapons-grade inside of three to four weeks.”

“They were proud of it,” Witkoff went on. “They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.”

Witkoff also claimed that he and Kushner, on behalf of the US, offered to provide Iran nuclear fuel for the next decade on the condition it was not used for any weapons program.

“They rejected that, which told us at that very moment that they had no — no notion of doing anything other than retaining enrichment for the purpose of weaponizing.”

With the US-Israeli war against Iran entering a fourth day, Witkoff described Tehran’s negotiating position as “silly,” but added: “They thought they could strong-arm us.”

There's more at the link.

Of course the Iranian leadership thought they could strong-arm President Trump!  They'd been doing it to Western nations, jointly and severally, for decades - why should this time be any different?  And so they presented the President with the one threat that he could not, dared not, leave unaddressed.  How do you kick the reality of nuclear weapons down the road?  You daren't . . . otherwise that reality might blow up in your face.

Think how easily Iran could smuggle a couple of nuclear warheads across our borders, perhaps concealed in container shipments from China, or carried by members of its diplomatic corps and/or terrorist groups that are already active in South America.  What would a US president do if he tried to rein in Iran in future, only to be told that unless he backed down, two or three US cities would be vaporized?  Can you imagine what a left-wing progressive President would do under those circumstances?  If you think Obama or Biden or another of their ilk would have stood up to that threat, I have this bridge in New York City I'd like to sell you.  Cash only, please, and in small bills.

No.  There are many reasons why the US and Israel might have refrained from acting as they did . . . but every one of them is trumped (you should pardon the expression) by the overriding threat of nuclear geopolitical terrorism.

As soon as Iran took that stance in Switzerland, it kicked the can right off the road and made its own destruction inevitable.  That's the bottom line.

I think that one day, the rest of the world might be very, very grateful to President Trump for taking the stance he did.

Peter

Will the Iran conflict draw in other nations? It's beginning to look likely...

 

We've heard rumors that Kurds in other Middle Eastern nations - Iraq, Syria and even possibly Turkey - may support Iranian Kurds if they stage an uprising to make their enclave independent of Iran.  Some fear that's a pipe dream that will never materialize (see, for example, this article from the Daily Telegraph).  Others think there's more to it.  In particular, Larry Lambert (who blogs at Virtual Mirage) has been to Iraqi Kurdistan recently, and is an adviser to its leaders (see his detailed background article for more information).  In a comment to a recent article by Lawdog, he had this to say.

I've been to Kurdistan, spoken with the Barzanis within the year, and worked there, so there is credibility to the extent that my observations are valid. I didn't travel to Iran to meet with the Iranian Kurds. As you point out, all of the Kurdish regions in Syria, Turkey, Barzani and Talibani in Iraq, and the Kurds in Iran have different political bents and different tribal affiliations. Some are hardcore opium growers and marketers, some have more oil, and in all cases, they are "Assyrians" culturally, which separates them from Arabs and Persians. Israel gets along with the Kurds more than just in an enemy of my enemy framework.

I'm certain that the Trump Administration promised the Kurds their "freedom" in exchange for "boots on the ground." Having run with them recently, that is the promise that would turn the trick. The US forces recently withdrawn from Syria were redeployed to Erbil to backfill for the Peshmerga who had deployed. The huge base in Erbil rarely makes the news, but it is significant, and the just-opened US Consulate in Erbil is the largest in the world.

. . .

... an open US recognition of a Kurdish state as free and independent will drop a turd in the punch.

There's more at the link.

So, it appears to be more than a remote possibility that Iranian Kurds, probably supported to a certain extent by Kurds from across the Middle East, may indeed rise up against the Iranian government.  What makes this even more likely are developments in Azerbaijan, on Iran's northern border.  The BBC reports:

Azerbaijan has said it is pulling its diplomatic staff out of Iran after it accused Iran of launching four drones across the border into the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan ... Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev condemned the "act of terror", demanding an explanation and apology from Tehran.

On Friday he went further, announcing the withdrawal of staff from Azerbaijan's embassy in Tehran and consulate in Tabriz "for their own safety", and state media said the military had been placed on maximum combat readiness.

Aliyev also touched on Iran's ethnic Azerbaijani population on Thursday - a sensitive subject for Tehran ... his anger went beyond words, saying that "independent Azerbaijan is a place of hope for Azerbaijanis living in Iran".

Baku has long avoided this line because of how sensitive it is for Tehran.

Iran is home to an estimated 20-25 million ethnic Azeris, who make up its largest minority group and are concentrated in the north-west along the Azerbaijan border.

The Islamic Republic has consistently regarded their identity and political affiliations as issues of utmost sensitivity. Tehran views any notion of Azerbaijani identity extending beyond its borders as a potential challenge to internal unity.

Aliyev has rarely spoken about Iranian Azeris in such explicitly aspirational terms and doing so now appears to be a calculated move.

. . .

[Iranian Azeris] are also a politically significant community. This week the exiled crown prince, Reza Pahlavi, has been urging Iranian Azerbaijanis, among other ethnic minorities, to rise up against the regime.

. . .

Despite their shared Shia Muslim identity, Iran and Azerbaijan have grown apart politically, and tensions worsened after Azerbaijan's military victories in the 2020 and 2023 Karabakh wars, which were helped by Turkish and Israeli-made weapons.

Iran views Baku's close defence partnership with Israel as a serious threat.

Iranian officials and media have repeatedly accused Azerbaijan of helping Israeli intelligence operate along Iran's northern frontier - claims Azerbaijan denies.

Azerbaijan's ties with Israel extend beyond security. Israel relies heavily on Azerbaijani oil, and the two countries maintain close political and intelligence co-operation.

For Tehran, this collaboration is at the centre of its suspicion.

Azerbaijan, for its part, has long resented Iran's political and military support for neighbouring Armenia, seeing it as direct interference in a conflict central to its own security.

That history of mistrust is an important backdrop to Thursday's escalation, shaping how Baku interprets every move coming from Tehran.

. . .

Aliyev's decision to talk openly of Azerbaijan being a "place of hope" for Iranian Azeris introduces a new and potentially unpredictable element.

Aliyev has pointed out to Tehran that he was the sole foreign leader to visit any Iranian embassy to express condolences following the killing of Khamenei, and that he personally responded to a request to help evacuate Iranian embassy staff from Lebanon.

Now, he says, Iran has repaid those gestures with drone strikes on Azerbaijani territory, something he views as a deep betrayal.

Again, more at the link.

The Associated Press added more details.

President Ilham Aliyev accused Iran of carrying out “a groundless act of terror and aggression,” and said his military has been told to prepare and implement retaliatory measures. The Caspian Sea nation halted truck traffic across the nearly 700-kilometer (over 400-mile) border with Iran.

. . .

[Aliyev] said Azerbaijan’s military has been instructed “to prepare and implement retaliatory measures.”

The Defense Ministry vowed that Iran’s “attacks will not go unanswered,” adding it was preparing the “necessary response” to protect “the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country, ensure the safety of civilians and civilian infrastructure.” It didn’t elaborate.

Aliyev stressed that Azerbaijan “is not participating in operations against Iran -– neither previously nor this time -– and will not do so.”

He added: “We have neither interest in conducting any operations against neighboring countries, nor does our policy allow it.”

More at the link.

I need hardly point out that "not participating in operations against Iran" doesn't exactly square with the Azerbaijani military's being "instructed to prepare and implement retaliatory measures".  Cognitive dissonance, much?

Furthermore, if Iranian Kurds rise up against the government, consider what Iranian Azeris might do.  After all, many of their ethnic leaders have been oppressed by the Iranian government, including imprisonment, harassment, censorship and other measures.  Regardless of what the Azerbaijan government does, perhaps some Iranian Azeris might be inspired by a Kurdish uprising to launch one of their own;  and if they do, can Azerbaijan - which regards itself as the homeland and leader of all Azeris - stand idly by and do nothing, thereby potentially threatening its self-proclaimed ethnic leadership?

Finally, note that US Vice-President Vance is currently visiting both Armenia and Azerbaijan, two nations that recently fought a war with each other and are still at daggers drawn.  If the threat of renewed hostilities between them can be negotiated away, or at least reduced, that will allow Azerbaijan to focus its attention - and its military - elsewhere . . . towards Iran, perhaps?  Might Vice-President Vance be discussing that matter in suitably diplomatic language?

So, the US appears to be encouraging an uprising by Iran's Kurds, and Azerbaijan is making nice with Israel and the USA - both allied with each other against Iran - in the face of Iranian terrorism and suppression of its large Azeri population.  If both subsets of Iran's people were to rise up and support each other, probably - almost certainly - with military support from the USA and Israel, what would this mean to Iran?  It would become a three-sided onslaught against that nation.  Could the current regime there survive that?

I'm speculating, of course:  but if one looks at the news articles and commentary above, and reads between the lines, and puts two and two together, the picture that emerges is one that should make the Iranian government very worried indeed.  At least, that's the way I see it.

Peter